


The Last Heroes

by dreamfleet, mezmerize



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017)
Genre: Angst, Finn also needs a hug, Last Jedi spoilers, M/M, Poe Dameron Needs A Hug, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2017-12-16
Packaged: 2019-02-15 13:56:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13032588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamfleet/pseuds/dreamfleet, https://archiveofourown.org/users/mezmerize/pseuds/mezmerize
Summary: All they have is an ancient ship, several dozen people, and hope.Or: how it should have ended.Last Jedi spoilers: beware!





	The Last Heroes

“Those people are heroes,” Poe says, and Leia slaps him clean across the face and it hurts, yes, but it hurts more that she looks at him and she sees failure.

Leia Organa, hero of the Rebellion and Leader of the New Resistance and possible replacement heroic-mother-figure in Poe Dameron’s fractured life looks at him and sees him like Shara Bey did in the jungles on Yavin 4, when Poe wouldn’t come down from a tree because just a little higher, mom, I can almost reach it!

“It’s not worth it!” She’d called up, clear and strong. “New fruit will grow, lower down. Let the birds have this.” You’re going to hurt yourself, she hadn’t said, but even Poe at six knew to read between the words to that truth.

I’ll be fine! He’d yelled in his high voice, laughing at the way it sailed between the trees, and stretched out his fingers with the knowledge secure that he’d prove her wrong and make her see that he could just as weightless and fearless. His calves wrapped loosely around a waving branch beneath him and—

Closed them on fruit. Pulled it down from that high bending branch with a whoop chased by laughter and I told you I could get it.

Then Poe fell out of the tree.

He doesn’t remember everything that happened after that. It’s a blur of leaves and his mother’s worry and alternate scolding. Poe remembers red, and being scared there was so much blood until his dad told him (laughing, worried) he’d squished the fruit underneath himself.

It hadn’t stopped Poe then, but the look in his mother’s eyes, like he’d disappointed her, had slowed him for a few days.

She was right, of course, and Leia was right, too. Poe does that: he gets too caught up in notions of glory and sacrifice and action to remember to open his eyes and see the whole plan instead of his own part.

Poe grew up on tales of heroes and sacrifice and the glory of his parents almost-but-not-quite dying. Someone always came in to save the day in those stories. More than anything Poe wanted to be that person. To rush in, guns blazing, when all other hope was lost, and turn the story around again. A light to brighten the darkness, like his mother, like his father, like Leia Organa and Luke Skywalker.

This, now, is what is left of that dream: a few dozen exhausted people in various states of shock and injury on an aging ship heading for a destination with no name except “anywhere but here.” Retreat. Responsibility.

It weighs heavy on Leia and pulls her shoulders down where she speaks quietly to Rey.

Poe can’t even summon up the energy for self-loathing. He can taste the names of his friends in his mouth, crowding there as the adrenaline ebbs away. It’s a familiar feeling, and it always leaves Poe drifting a little bit.

His squadron anchors him.

They are not here to anchor him, so Poe grabs onto the nearest metallic object and hopes he doesn’t sink down through the floor of the ship into the stars.

Finn is here, and BB-8 and Rose Tico who is brave and bright and very still, and whose equally brave and bright sister is so much ash.

Finn is here. Poe watches the strong curve of his shoulders, unbroken by that terrible scar.

He’d had ideas about when Finn woke up. Ideas starring Poe, like most of Poe’s ideas. The pilot and the ex-Stormtrooper, and the place they would find for Finn in the Resistance. The intel Finn might have, and the things he might learn, and foods Poe could show him.

He’s written holos in his head for this man, about this man, during the weeks Finn was asleep, in between the rush and chaos of preparing for evacuation. Finn would wake, and Poe would be there to smile at him, so that the first face he saw was a friendly one. Finn would wake and Poe would greet him and tell him that he was a hero and that he was welcome here. Finn would smile back with maybe a little pain but not much and tell him, yes, I’ll stay, I want to help, because Finn is good, at his core.

They’d be inseparable, and Poe would get to watch Finn explore humanity outside the tight confines of armor, and figure out his place in the galaxy and discover eating for the sake of eating, and parties, and holding hands.

There would be time, and they would regroup and they would fight together. Maybe Finn would awake on a brand-new base, ready for he and Poe to make into a new home from which to find glory and peace (a concept that Poe maybe still doesn’t understand as it relates to himself. He has been so sure of his own eventual fiery death, hasn’t even had to make peace with it when it rears its head so often because he knows he will go out in a blaze of glory. That’s what pilots do: they die.)

Instead Finn woke to chaos, alone, and stumbled right into a mess with a question on his lips that Poe didn’t even have a proper answer to. “You must have a thousand questions,” with the answers ready on his tongue except the one Finn needed.

“Where are we going?” Poe wants to ask, except he isn’t sure anyone knows the answer save maybe Chewbacca, who is still in the cockpit, piloting with a stubbornness Poe recognizes too well. He wants to plan, to gather kindling, to start to pick up the pieces, except that he doesn’t even know which pieces need to be picked up, which pieces they have in the first place. His stomach is a black hole. That could be guilt, or hunger, or both.

Finn is still standing by Rose. He looks very serious. Or tired.

Poe’s fingers twitch on the bulkhead he’s grabbed onto. Under it, he knows, are cooling systems, ancient and bulky, before they’d been slimmed down and stored nearer to engines. The Corellians aren’t known for their internal engineering.

He’s been standing long enough. He’s been doing nothing for long enough. Poe doesn’t know how to do nothing. Poe is not an expert in doing nothing, he’s an expert in stretching out his fingers for fruits he can’t reach and almost-suicide missions and blowing shit up. The rest of his squadron, they pick up the slack, they are there to pull the weight that Poe himself cannot pull, except they aren’t anymore.

Because of Poe.

He closes his eyes and ignores the vaguely concerned look from the tech next to him.

It could be minutes, it could be hours, but eventually he hears his name, softly spoken from next to him.

For a second, Poe thinks he can’t open his eyes, but he manages it after a second—kriff, he is so tired, and can’t even think of sleep—and there, on his left right next to an open space yawning into a corridor that becomes banged-up cockpit, is Finn.

Who is thinner than he was when they met, and who Poe’s eyes are stuck on now.

He musters a very small smile, the biggest he can pull off right now. “Hey, buddy.”

“Hey,” Finn says with a shadow of his own smile. “Um, Poe,” he seems nervous, eyes flicking from Poe’s face, across the ship, and back. “You were right.”

I was? Poe wants to ask. How’s that exactly? I don’t feel right. “About what?” He asks instead, the more sure-sounding question. Finn’s unhurt this time. They’ve escaped again, narrowly, and Finn is standing this time. That’s an improvement.

“About the big gun,” Finn says on a breath, his hands clenching on his thighs, “you were right. I shouldn’t’ve tried to do that by myself. I’m, I’m really glad I’m not dead right now.”

Poe’s pent-up breath breaks out of him all at once. He flops back against the wall behind him and is glad it doesn’t spin.

His smile comes a tiny bit easier. “Yeah, buddy, me too. Really glad. Losing you won’t help anybody. We need you around.”

“Yeah?” Finn laughs, just a little, and his shoulders relax slightly. “Rose and I, we really tried. We tried to go with the plan, but everything just… it just went wrong. We were arrested at the casino, we had a codebreaker help us escape, but then he sold us out to the Order. Oh,” Finn turns his head to smile at Poe, “BB-8 really saved us. It—you should ask it about it.”

“Oh, I bet I’ll be hearing about it later,” Poe laughs, and for a second everything hovers on the brink of normalcy: he is laughing about a mission that almost failed but still ended up well with his squadron, taking stock of the times they all could have died but didn’t.

But they’re not.

Poe bites down hard on his lip. “You got arrested?”

“Parking violation,” Finn groans, dropping his head back against the wall.

“Kriff,” Poe chokes, but Finn just looks at him and that’s it, for Poe: he loses it in laughter so loud that half the heads in the area swing toward him. Poe can’t even care. Laughter seizes his belly and clutches at his lungs and he can’t stop himself now. It’s too much, for what Finn said. He can’t make himself stop. His eyes sting, and his breath hitches a bit, and Poe’s fingers go tight on the bulkhead as he leans toward Finn.

After a minute, Finn joins him and their laugher fills the ship, warm and bright and so at odds with what just happened.

Poe’s hand leaves the bulkhead and stretches out into that small space between them. He’s still laughing, and there are tears sliding along his jaw. Finn’s face twists the same way and then his fingers curl into Poe’s. His hand clenches too tight, but Poe can’t tell him to let go. Won’t tell him to let go, maybe. Finn’s hand is more grounding than the skeleton of the ship. Poe never liked being grounded much but his thoughts finally are blurred into hyperspace star-lines and Finn is alive, and laughing too.

This is all they have. All they have is an ancient ship, several dozen people, and hope.

**Author's Note:**

> As with many of us, we were disappointed with the Poe/Finn relationship in the Last Jedi. As a fandom, it is our duty to add it back in.


End file.
